


After the Party

by applecameron



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Anxiety, Depression, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 07:01:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4777925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applecameron/pseuds/applecameron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Companion piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4709222">"Afterparty"</a>, the same events, Eames' POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Party

Tanzania. Eames is standing at the top of a rise, looking down at the entrance of a gold mine, map in hand, discussing a plan to reopen it, when his phone vibrates at him. 

It's Cobb. Arthur is conspicuous by his silence. Of course, that's not what the text message says. It says, _A vanished thin air. Any sighting your location?_

What modern technology hasn't done for modern language, he tsks. The observation doesn't stop him from replying, _on it_ , and turning to leave at once. 

Eames considers one of his guiding principles to be that the only trouble Arthur should be allowed to be in is trouble that Eames gets him into. 

Three days later, he is thinking his way through LAX. Discreet consultation with the others offers few clues as to Arthur's trail after their flight with Fischer, but Ariadne thinks he stayed in the terminal. Cobb thinks he's still in California, for reasons he can't articulate, and has already checked all the local hotels. Eames has a high regard for reasons people can't articulate. They often come from unconscious recognition of signs and patterns. 

He operates for the moment on the assumption that all these beliefs are true and that Cobb's check of the Los Angeles area was complete. Arthur is in California but not Los Angeles. 

He retraces steps and makes note of ubiquitous shuttle service to both Las Vegas and California's Bay Area. Arthur, he thinks, would head north, not further east. Vegas is such an ugly city by day. Aesthetics demand a flight north, and paranoia…paranoia would require a shift in mode of transport soon. 

Silicon Valley it is. As a link, though, not a final stop. 

Miles has the only actual clue. Arthur, who uses burner phones and rotates his SIMM cards, etc., like the pro he is, called him from a Sacramento number once, a very long time ago. It might even have been a landline. 

It fits as a destination. 

* * *

The fruit flies frighten him. It's so very un-Arthur-like to be so untidy. And this is untidy with food. Arthur has always been willing to throw food away out of tidiness. He'll clean up mere minutes after finishing takeaway on the job. He suspects the man of a keen sense of smell, or obsessive sense of propriety, or both. This trash, a scattering of banana peels with fruit flies cavorting happily around it, signals something. 

Eames remains open, receptive to his environment, to what it might be. Deciding too quickly on what something means based on too few facts can be disastrous. 

The bag hidden in the duffle is Arthur's garment bag, he recognizes it. There is a cellphone, silent by its charger, on the coffee table. It looks familiar, but that is the way of the cellphone. And then there were the little traps set hither and yon, that he encountered on entering. 

The apartment lacks some of that sense of physical presence a space gets when someone lives there. And yet. 

He proceeds, the fear coiled at the base of his stomach shifting from the fear it is not Arthur, to the fear that it is. Finding him took too long. 

It is late enough in the evening that a man tired from a long day, taking it easy after a long job, might have reasonably gone to bed. He lets the door creak when it opens, alerting Arthur to his presence. 

Who does not move. 

The bedroom does not smell of sick, blood, or rot. "Arthur." 

Still no response. The room is dimly lit by street light from outside. He sees the outline of a form, curled softly on its side. 

Coming closer, Eames recognizes there isn't a smell of illness but there is something else. 

He gets close enough to touch, and does, knee pressing into the mattress as he gently grips a bony shoulder. "Arthur." 

Nothing. 

"Arthur, darling. Wake up. Just for a moment, prove you're not dead." 

The figure, it is Arthur, he knows that body, both still and in motion, shifts. Mumbles something that might be 'Eames'. 

"Arthur. Please." Hand still on his shoulder. 

Arthur tugs at the hand and Eames obeys, half-falling, half-sliding along the curve swept out by Arthur's body. Who keeps his hand for himself, like a child's bear, tucked to his chest. 

He waits for the bed to settle, then reclaims his hand, pressing Arthur's face. "Are you ill?" Moves to feel down his body for bandages, seeking those grunts of pain that would indicate injury, even through this stupor. Nothing. Whatever the threat to him, it has either passed, or is not immediate. 

They rest together, Arthur waking no further. 

Eames inhales, assessing. The bed and Arthur in it smell stale, like he's been in bed all day, not recently retired for a refreshing night's sleep. His skin is not hot. The bed is fully warmed from his body heat. 

The reasons Arthur might take to his bed and stay there, unwashed, comprise a short list and are predominantly psychological. In retrospect, not surprising, either. He was much closer to Cobb and Mal than Eames was. And inception was, in some ways, their way of putting Mal to rest. Someone should have checked on him sooner. Or gone with him after their flight. _He_ should have, in spite of the Arthur mystique of implacable competence, especially since he'd made such a study of the man behind the mystique. Poorly done. He doesn't like admitting it, but poorly done. 

He slips out of the bed after a time, finds Arthur's phone and its charger, and puts them to use. Calls Cobb with a terse report. Arthur lives, Eames is with him. More later. 

Lifts the bedclothes and slips back in behind Arthur, after divesting himself of a layer of clothing. Puts his arm over Arthur, which he seems to want, and holds them both. 

It pleases him that Arthur's uncalculated response to Eames when he's sleeping is to pull him closer. It pleases him very much. He sleeps holding onto that fact, and Arthur. 

Closer to dawn, Arthur wakes, turning in his arms, kicking him in the process. "Sorry, were you asleep?" He mumbles. "Ugh." 

"Arthur. Are you all right?" 

"Sleeping off the job." His voice sounds watery. 

Eames tells him the date and he jerks. 

"Your phone's died. I plugged it in and called Cobb, told him you yet draw breath." He loosens his grip on Arthur, encouraging action such as rising with the lark, or breakfasting. Living. 

"Good." Instead of getting out of bed, Arthur tucks in, and touches Eames' lips, first with his fingers, as if testing their plumpness, then with his mouth. "Thank you." In this little bubble of quiet between them, the clinch seems inevitable, a natural consequence of events. "For looking for me." Arthur's mouth is dry and sour. Eames places his fingertips along his neck and kisses him back carefully. 

Halfway through the kiss Arthur runs out of energy. He just fades. Eames holds him, as the early hours lighten to proper dawn and beyond. Gets a good look. Face in repose, uninhabited. Bags under his eyes. Lack of grooming. With clinical interest, he gauges Arthur's capillary refill time by pressing the skin of his cheek, and frowns. Dehydration is a danger at any age, in any climate. 

He can see bones he didn't remember before with such clarity. Even under the fabric of Arthur's shirt, his clavicle looks so vulnerable. He brushes his thumb over it, thinking. 

He waits long enough to determine he's not falling back asleep and Arthur's not waking back up anytime soon, and rises to start his day. 

* * *

He has a collection of poems in Italian, and a modern Guatemalan poet new to him, if he gets bored with the Italian. 

Eames completes his masquerade as a middle-class Sacramento man by going to the supermarket that morning and buying a convincing array of forgettable selections, easy calories like peanut butter, apple juice boxes. Simple foods. Broth. Ready-to-eat foods. Then he goes elsewhere, to a place in Rocklin, and buys a moderately expensive home espresso machine and coffee. There is only so much masquerade, on his ostensible off time, that he will submit to endure. 

Arthur doesn't seem to have even moved in his absence. This won't do. 

Eames doesn't turn on lights, he doesn't need them at this time of day. He toes off his shoes at Arthur's door, water bottle in hand. Places the water bottle on the bed between them, and pulls Arthur up to sit, without warning. 

The lack of reaction frightens him almost as much as the fruit flies when he'd first arrived. The body in his arms is limp, and he wonders if he'd simply arrived too late, that whatever internal weight causing this was going to crush him before Eames could find the right leverage to lift it. That he'd saved Cobb, restored him to his life, only to lose his own. "Come on, lovey." He uncaps the bottle one-handed and lifts it into position. "Just a little drink." 

He makes a mess of the pair of them, but that's expected. Arthur surfaces, barely, enough to swallow, and he forces much of the bottle into him, then waits, holding him upright, to make sure it wasn't too much. 

He repeats the performance as frequently as he dares over a period of some hours, forcibly hydrating his patient. It's a mark of water loss, or the depth of his depression, that Arthur consumes that much and does not wake to use the toilet. 

When dawn re-lights the room, Arthur looks better. His pose is more open, his color not so drained. But it could be Eames' imagination. He wonders, for probably the 10th time since he arrived, if he should call in reinforcements, either with a PASIV, or more medical training than his own. 

The idea that Arthur could have just let himself die out of neglect without anyone knowing is appalling. 

And so he waits. Being British, this requires tea. Out of an abundance of hope, he selects two mugs from the limited selection in Arthur's kitchen. 

Reads. Naps. Goes out to the corner shop after realizing the carton of milk for tea was half-and-half and not milk at all. Americans. Makes tea again. Reads. 

About the time he'd contemplated repeating his water bottle performance, only with some electrolyte-laden neon-colored drink, there is the blessed sound of Arthur getting out of bed, stumbling down the hall. He listens to the sound of various plumbing in use with some relief. 

Arthur pauses coming into his little living room, but Eames just closes his book, as if he waited for Arthur to get out of bed and have his tea every day. 

Arthur chooses the uncomfortable chair, huddling in his robe. "When did you go out?" 

"Just now. You'd no milk." 

He assesses. Arthur has possibly lost as much as a stone in weight, the lean power of his body replaced by something bony and pained. His body language is exhausted, to be charitable. 

"Tea?" 

"Lovely." 

Eames pours, offers the mug, then doctors his own. 

"You've lost weight, Arthur." 

"Too busy sleeping." Arthur holds the mug in both hands. Drinks and savors. His hands are shaky. "Not enough time to eat." 

"If I cook, will you eat?" he assays gently. 

"I'm not sick, Eames. I don't need cosseting." 

Idiot. "Do you do this after every job? Sleep for a month and starve yourself in the process?" How long has this really been going on, was what he really wanted to know. He's never seen the man this…stripped away of himself. The closed-off look on his face at Mal's funeral doesn't even come close to this passive nothingness, this suicide-by-wasting he's attempted. Permitted. Both. 

Arthur makes a sound, possibly amused, dragging him back to the here and now. "The latter wasn't on purpose. I never sleep properly on the job, so, yes. This is my afterparty." He gestures with the mug. "Cheers." 

Eames is now fully confident Arthur does not remember the past 24 hours. Has no idea that Eames has been here that long. Doesn't remember last night at all. 

Wonders, abstracted, if he remembers their kissing. He smirks to himself, it would be a shame to have forgotten their first kiss. "Cheers, pet." 

"And, I intend to enjoy cosseting you for a while." He reaches for a plate. "Cake, I think, to start?" 

Arthur eats a thick slice, drinks his tea, and then falls back asleep, chin sagging to his chest. 

Eames carries him to bed and doubts he'll remember it. 

* * *

They narrowly avoid disaster when Arthur insists on taking a bath too soon to hold himself upright that long and Eames has to drag him up out of the tub, arms shaking with effort and fear. 

It doesn't take that much longer, however, on a diet of plenty, before Arthur graduates to sleeping on the sofa during the day, with interruptions for food (including microwave-in-a-mug brownies, a very American concept that tickles Eames so greatly he can't help expounding upon the subject), and then retiring to his bed at night. He seems to draw some obscure comfort from Eames' presence there as well. Never questions the sleeping arrangement. Eames is usually up before him, but that's to be expected. 

The first crying jag hits when he's well enough to have it. It's not uncommon. The ill or depressed sometimes can't even muster up the energy to weep. It makes the time when they are beginning to feel a little better terribly dangerous if still suicidal. Eames knows this truth intimately. He'll never judge. Never tell. 

Lays there, at night, to pet him. Continues telling him with action what words are not persuasive enough to render. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, holding in the middle of the night and not teasing about it the next day. All fall under the umbrella of cosseting and he commits to the task whole-heartedly. 

It's not hard. It's Arthur, after all. There's something utterly charming about domesticity with Arthur. There is the morning he is heading to the lav when Arthur is coming out of the bedroom and just stops him, puts his arms around him at the waist and leans into him. It's heartstoppingly endearing to a man already more than smitten. Mouths 'good morning' into his collar. He wraps his arms around Arthur in return and whispers into his hair, "good morning, pet. Fancy a cuppa?" 

There's a relapse, also not uncommon, when Arthur takes to his bed around the clock again and turns up his nose at almost everything, eyes looking at something Eames can't see. Finally, Eames just crawls into bed with him and lies with him, brow to brow, arm at his waist. Dips toast in some broth and feeds him in bed and wields 'please' like a weapon, stratagems Arthur in his right mind would no doubt find beneath them both. Yet, effective. 

Time passes. And then there's Arthur, dozing lightly on the sofa in the warmth of the afternoon, who lifts up his feet so Eames can sit down with his book and his little espresso cup. Listens to Italian poetry read aloud with his eyes closed and his ankle under Eames' hand. When Eames is finished for a while, throat feeling dry, Arthur says, "thank you." 

"You're welcome, pet." They both know it's not the poetry. 

One night not long after that Arthur wakes Eames up in the middle of the night and tells him about Cobb. About Mal's death. How everything became about keeping Dom moving forward. Jobs. How the more desperate Cobb was, the more Arthur carried him. The job of a point man is hard enough when your extractor isn't going mad and self-destructive. Then the chance with Saito. That toward the end he felt he had to hold on even tighter, to be perfect, with so much at stake. That sometimes he'd wake up shaking in the middle of the night, unable to make himself stop, well before this attempt at inception. 

Eames holds him through the litany. He has to say it out loud. Recognize it. Categorize it, before he can file it away and escape back to living. Then he kisses Eames, and laughs shakily at getting kissed back. Even shakier when Eames presses him down on his back. "Cosseting, darling, remember," until he closes his eyes under Eames' exploring touch. His skin is so very sweet. 

He goes slow. And Arthur lets him in. After so long alone, lets him in, thank God, and later, falls asleep on his chest. 


End file.
